Monthly Archives: February 2013

I recently bought this amazing shooter from FredJ, it’s called Twinkle Tale for Sega Mega Drive! It was released exclusively in Japan in 1992, developed by Zap Corporation and published by WAS (Wonder Amusement Studio). I’ve never heard of any one of these two, but they sure did a great job with this game!

Twinkle Tale is an overhead shmup, but it’s different since your character is walking around on the ground and you can walk in all directions. There are chests to open, narrow paths to follow and different roads to choose from (they all lead to the same end though). At first glance it looks like a fantasy RPG (and you all know how fond I am of RPG’s… >_<) but when you start shooting, feeling the fluent controls and experiencing the amazing graphics and sprites it all changes and you can’t do anything but love this game! ^_^

Since I still can’t record gameplay from my japanese Sega Mega Drive I had to use my iPhone to try and take some screenshots..

You can set the game to various difficult levels, I started on normal, but it was still pretty difficult.. The controls are pretty simple. You have a magic attack which is limited unless you pick up power-ups for it, but 3 is the maximum you can carry. You shoot with the B button and you can change between 3 various shots with C.

The first shot is straight forward and powerful, the second one spreads wider and is a bit less powerful, the third shot is a homing shot that aims directly towards any enemies but is pretty weak. This third one is the one I ended up using mostly during the stages since it took out all the smaller foes and medium foes quickly, but on the bosses I preferred the strong shot. You can level up all your shots to a maximum of lvl 3. If you get hit you loose one lvl of the shot you have equipped. You will quickly find power-ups though, since there are a lot of chests and stuff that carry items in all the stages.

You have three life bars, once you get hit three times it’s Game Over. However you have a couple of credits. You will encounter mobs of enemies coming at you, goblins throwing sticks, bats, mages, giant stone golems, skeletons, gargoyles and various other creatures. The enemies are very varied and well made and you encounter new ones on each stage.

You will also encounter various obstacles throughout the stages, like falling rocks in narrow paths, shooting arrows from the walls etc.

I made it as far as to the second boss on my first couple of credits. I made a few stupid mistakes, like walking right up the path where the boss would come from, thinking that was the way out, and he killed me instantly >_< I bet my second attempt will go much better! I just had to stop to write about it first ^_^ I also took some picture from the manual. It looks like it’s torn all around the edges but that “rip” is actually printed on the paper, I guess to make it look old?

And here’s the first boss, a three headed dragon-lion-thingy:

And the second boss, a giant floating knight casting lightning:

This game is pretty rare, and it wasn’t cheap, but I’m really happy I bought it. It’s an awesome addition to my collection and it has great replay value! I will continue my attempt to advance past the second boss after this post ;D

I’ve never been very interested in collecting pirated games for any of my retro consoles. I have always preferred original games, however lately I’ve accidentally come by a few pirated Famciom games. Like the Super Mario IV Armadillo hack, which is basically just the Armadillo game changed to have Mario as the main character, and Caveman Games, which is a NES release ported on a cart for the Famicom.

I know there’s a lot of people that prefer pursuing those rare pirated games, and lately I’ve begun to understand why that is. It’s quite charming, it’s a game just like all the other games I’m collecting, and somebody made it, made an effort to re-code an existing game to their liking, and it’s always intriguing since you never know what to expect form a pirate game. The pirated games are more rare as well, and usually unique, since they weren’t mass produced like many other original releases.

The Last Ninja was a game I saw on Ebay and it intrigued me since I wasn’t completely sure which game it was and also, my best friend NinjaBrite loves Ninjas! So I bought it hoping that she would enjoy trying it ^_^

So I cleaned the game up a bit and tried it briefly to make sure it worked and it worked perfectly on the first try ^_^ I looked it up as well and found out that The Last Ninja was actually released for the NES by Jaleco however the game was also firstly released on the Commodore 64 but it was called The Last Ninja 2.
I compared some screenshots from this version and the version on C64. It is lacking a lot of the details from the C64 version. Here’s the comparison of sceneries: (click to enlarge)

If only the C64 didn’t have such darn long loading sequences then I would probably be playing that more often than the 8bit systems! >_<

This weekend I went to a second hand store and found the most awesome thing I’ve found in years!! The second hand stores around where I live never sells games, I usually see antique stores and random charity shops to loot for decorative nonsense, jewelry and interior stuff like furniture and such (yes I do buy other things than games sometimes) ;D

But this time I found something that was completely and utterly useful and fit right into my Retro Room!! A vintage cassette rack box thingy!!

It’s all orange and pretty, which is the color I’ve been using in my gaming room ^_^ It fits right in!! AND now I have a really clever storage for my Commodore 64 games :D

And it looks awesome when it’s filled with some C64 cassettes ^__^

There’s even some room left in one corner so I can buy even MORE games for the C64 :D Any good suggestions of what the must-haves for Commodore 64 would be? ^^

I actually waited until the winner was announced to decide what the package should contain, since I wanted to optimize the prize for whoever would win ^_^ Since theSegaDude is a Sega collector, the price was Sega inspired! :D

First of all a game, that I don’t think he already had in his collection: Tiny Toons Adventure: Busters Hidden Treasure

Then I made SEGA coasters with perler beads! :D

And then I also made a few artworks from Sega characters such as Sonic and Opa-Opa from Fantasy Zone (which is theSegaDude’s avatar) ^_^